Opera (15-26) gets very slow as Sessions.db gets large

I run Opera on several computers. I do not copy my profile between the computers manually (sneakernet), but I do/have had Synchronization enabled. I have noticed that over time the browser gets slower and slower, to the point that recently it would freeze solid for 5-10 seconds, then work normally for 5 seconds, then freeze, repeat, CONSTANTLY. It become unusable.

I tried a lot of things to troubleshoot. I read about Flash permission issues, which helped a little. Then I deleted (moved away) all my profile data from C:\Users\Me\AppData\Roaming\Opera Software\Opera Stable and suddenly it became super-responsive again.

I played with it some more, deleting just one config file at a time. I noticed that the Sessions.db has grown to 350-550MB, depending on which machine we're talking about! When I delete that, Opera becomes responsive again. So my fix is currently to write down all the tabs I have open, delete all the Session.* files, start fresh, and open up all my tabs again. It immediately cures Opera... though I don't know how long until it builds up the huge DB again (currently at 40MB after 2 days).

I have Opera set to open from the previous session, where I left off. Those Session.db's have also been building since first upgrading after v12, and all the updates since. So I don't know if it's just that Opera never cleans up the DB because it's all the same session, or if it's an upgrade corruption, or whatever. (I'm sad to see the flat file that I could read, from <v12, go away.)

Anybody have any insight on this? Are there settings I can adjust to make the Session.db behave better? Is this just a bug? Am I using the browser in a way the developers just couldn't imagine, so I'm "breaking it"?

Hmm. I don't even have a session.db file and I can't remember off the top of my head what its used for. Do you use 'Continue where I left off' under Startup Option in Settings? I think it might be for that but I can't remember. Maybe turn that off.

On another note you should look into 'Session Buddy', the Chrome extension. With another extension called 'Download Chrome Extension' you can download and install extensions from the Chrome Store into Opera and run them natively. Its a wonderful little session tool that allows you to both save sessions manually and also saves them for you automatically on a timer in case something crashes on you. This least you quickly get back to what you were doing without having to write down all the tabs you have open. Its great at works almost as well as the old sessions feature from Opera 12.

After a few days, my session.db is now up to about 120MB, and Opera is starting to get frequent momentary pauses. For example, while typing this, the text will stop for 2-4 seconds (~1 word), about every 10-15 seconds (~5 words).

It's obviously some kind of bug. I hope somebody sees this and takes a look into the problem.

I'm currently using 26 Stable too. But it's been going on for several versions... it just wasn't until recently that I figured out what does it.

(I'm the same Guido as the OP. This account was having trouble before.)

So we're on Day 3 now, after blowing away the session.db, and it's basically back to full slowness. 5-10 second long frozen pauses, in between brief periods of functionality. It makes it very hard to type this paragraph

I don't understand... if I can now reproduce this happening by just leaving the browser open for 3 days, how has the development team not discovered it? Is there a way I can forward it to them as a bug, or get in contact with them, so that I could send them a copy of the session.db's it creates for analysis?

I do leave Opera running, but I do also periodically close it. So it's not a biproduct strictly of running for an extended period, since closing it doesn't reset the problem. It could be a product of total uptime though.

Neither... Every several days I delete the session.db, using the "Download Chrome Extension" and "Session Buddy" plugins (mentioned above) to restore my tabs. That buys me several more days of smooth sailing.

Hopefully the devs take my bug report seriously, and fix this thing. It's blatantly reproducible, on a couple different machines I use. I've been using Opera since the beginning, and I really don't want to have to switch.

Have you tired disabling 'Continue where I left off' in the startup options? As I said above I don't even have any sessions files and I think its because I don't use that feature. Yeah, it needs to be fixed by the devs but at least you wont have to close Opera all the time till the do track down the problem.

I'm on the verge of abandoning Opera for this reason.
Once the file gets large enough, Opera becomes pretty much unusable. I've been getting by using Session buddy and deleting session.db file and that work for a time but its not long before the file has grown large enough to become a problem again.

@krrish1379 Its basically a save of every window and webpage you have open. So, when you open a previous session, it opens all of the webpages in one go. Its a feature Opera 12 had built in and its very handy for picking up where you left off. Currently it does it if you have Continue where I left off in the settings, but that only works when closing and reopening the browser. Extensions like Session Buddy can save and open sessions at any time and even keep several sessions saved at once.

@gregdray Just out of curiosity, what OS are you running and how much RAM do you have?